Published before the first credential exists.

The international standard for certifying persons treats one arrangement as a threat to impartiality on its face: an organization that both trains candidates and decides whether they pass. It is the single most common structural failure in this industry, and it is why several energetic certification ventures never become credible.

The policy

1. The board delivers no training. CABCEP does not sell, deliver, endorse, accredit or recommend courses, and it derives no revenue from any course.
2. No course is ever required. No CABCEP scheme will require a particular training programme as a condition of eligibility, and no provider will be described as preferred, recommended or advantageous.
3. Open entry. Candidates trained anywhere, or nowhere, sit the same examination on the same terms, at the same fee, on the same calendar.
4. No examiner examines their own students. A person who has trained a candidate takes no part in examining, assessing or deciding that candidate's certification for two years after the training.
5. Certification decisions are separated from commerce. The decision to grant, refuse, suspend or withdraw a certification is made on the published criteria, by people with no commercial interest in the outcome, and is not delegated to anyone who sells anything to candidates.
6. Threats are identified, documented and reviewed. Relationships that could create a threat to impartiality — ownership, governance, personnel, revenue, family — are recorded, assessed and either eliminated or brought under documented control, on a standing basis rather than when somebody asks.
7. An impartiality committee oversees this, with balanced stakeholder representation and the standing to say the board has got it wrong, publicly.
8. Complaints and appeals are heard by people who did not make the original decision, under a published procedure, with the outcome recorded.

What this costs us, deliberately

Requiring a course would be the fastest route to revenue in this business, and every candidate who trains elsewhere and certifies with us is revenue we forgo. That is the trade. A credential is worth having precisely to the degree that it could have been refused, and an organization that profits from preparing you for its own examination cannot credibly refuse you.

Holding us to it

If you believe CABCEP has acted contrary to this policy — in a scheme, a decision, a communication or a commercial relationship — say so, using the form on the home page, and it goes to the impartiality committee rather than to the people complained about. We would rather hear it early and publicly than have it become true quietly.

Common questions